The good news for Grassley, and for everyone else, is that starting Sunday night and running through Wednesday the History Channel is showing a new four-part series called “America’s War on Drugs.” Not only is it an important contribution to recent American history, it’s also the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50 years.

That core truth is: The war on drugs has always been a pointless sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with some of the world’s largest drug cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971, top narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest levels of power in America.

On the one hand, this shouldn’t be surprising. The voluminous documentation of this fact in dozens of books has long been available to anyone with curiosity and a library card.

Yet somehow, despite the fact the U.S. has no formal system of censorship, this monumental scandal has never before been presented in a comprehensive way in the medium where most Americans get their information: TV.

That’s why “America’s War on Drugs” is a genuine milestone. We’ve recently seen how ideas that once seemed absolutely preposterous and taboo — for instance, that the Catholic Church was consciously safeguarding priests who sexually abused children, or that Bill Cosby may not have been the best choice for America’s Dad — can after years of silence finally break through into popular consciousness and exact real consequences. The series could be a watershed in doing the same for the reality behind one of the most cynical and cruel policies in U.S. history.

A still frame of former crack kingpin Rick Ross in the History Channel documentary “America’s War on Drugs.”

Photo: Courtesy of History

The series, executive produced by Julian P. Hobbs, Elli Hakami, and Anthony Lappé, is a standard TV documentary; there’s the amalgam of interviews, file footage, and dramatic recreations. What’s not standard is the story told on camera by former Drug Enforcement Administration operatives as well as journalists and drug dealers themselves. (One of the reporters is Ryan Grim, The Intercept’s Washington bureau chief and author of “This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America.”)

There’s no mealy mouthed truckling about what happened. The first episode opens with the voice of Lindsay Moran, a one-time clandestine CIA officer, declaring, “The agency was elbow deep with drug traffickers.”

Then Richard Stratton, a marijuana smuggler turned writer and television producer, explains, “Most Americans would be utterly shocked if they knew the depth of involvement that the Central Intelligence Agency has had in the international drug trade.”

Next, New York University professor Christian Parenti tells viewers, “The CIA is from its very beginning collaborating with mafiosas who are involved in the drug trade because these mafiosas will serve the larger agenda of fighting communism.”

For the next eight hours, the series sprints through history that’s largely the greatest hits of the U.S. government’s partnership with heroin, hallucinogen, and cocaine dealers. That these greatest hits can fill up most of four two-hour episodes demonstrates how extraordinarily deep and ugly the story is.

First we learn about the CIA working with Florida mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr. in the early 1960s. The CIA wanted Fidel Castro dead and, in return for Trafficante’s help in various assassination plots, was willing to turn a blind eye to the extensive drug trafficking by Trafficante and his allied Cuban exiles.

Then there’s the extremely odd tale of how the CIA imported significant amounts of LSD from its Swiss manufacturer in hopes that it could be used for successful mind control. Instead, by dosing thousands of young volunteers including Ken Kesey, Whitey Bulger, and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, the agency accidentally helped popularize acid and generate the 1960s counterculture of psychedelia.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. allied with anti-communist forces in Laos that leveraged our support to become some of the largest suppliers of opium on earth. Air America, a CIA front, flew supplies for the guerrillas into Laos and then flew drugs out, all with the knowledge and protection of U.S. operatives.

The same dynamic developed in the 1980s as the Reagan administration tried to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The planes that secretly brought arms to the contras turned around and brought cocaine back to America, again shielded from U.S. law enforcement by the CIA.

Most recently, there’s our 16-year-long war in Afghanistan. While less has been uncovered about the CIA’s machinations here, it’s hard not to notice that we installed Hamid Karzai as president while his brother apparently was on the CIA payroll and, simultaneously, one of the country’s biggest opium dealers. Afghanistan now supplies about 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

To its credit, the series makes clear that this is not part of a secret government plot to turn Americans into drug addicts. But, as Moran puts it, “When the CIA is focused on a mission, on a particular end, they’re not going to sit down and pontificate about ‘What are the long-term, global consequences of our actions going to be?’” Winning their secret wars will always be their top priority, and if that requires cooperation with drug cartels that are flooding the U.S. with their product, so be it. “A lot of these patterns that have their origins in the 1960s become cyclical,” Moran adds. “Those relationships develop again and again throughout the war on drugs.”

What makes this history so grotesque is the government’s mind-breaking levels of hypocrisy. It’s like Donald Trump declaring a War on Real Estate Developers that fills prisons with people who occasionally rent out their spare bedroom on Airbnb.

That brings us back to Charles Grassley. Grassley is now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a longtime committed drug warrior and — during the 1980s — a supporter of the contras.

Yet even Grassley is showing signs that he realizes there may have been some flaws in the war on drugs since the beginning. He recently has co-sponsored a bill that would reduce minimum sentences for drug offenses.

So now that the History Channel has granted Grassley his wish and is broadcasting this extraordinarily important history, it’s our job to make sure he and everyone like him sits down and watches it. That this series exists at all shows that we’re at a tipping point with this brazen, catastrophic lie. We have to push hard enough to knock it over.

Top photo: A still frame from the History Channel documentary “America’s War on Drugs.”

We depend on the support of readers like you to help keep our nonprofit newsroom strong and independent. Join Us

One of the first things you should understand about the “war on drugs” is that its main purpose was to decrease competition in the drub supply to favor the CIA’s flow. The CIA learned to use drug running to finance its black opps from the British, who fought a war with China when China tried to block the British flow of drugs from Afghanistan. Look up the history of Hong Kong. Regain exposed this with the Iran/Contra affair when if became clear he was shipping drugs to fund the Contra’s. Dan Quale was picked as VP, because he had an airport in Beliese that Bush senior used when Bush was head of the CIA. And we invaded Afghanistan when the Taliban almost completely shut down the production of Opiates by the Northern Alliance. Opiate production is booming now with major flows into the airport in Florida.

Your story about the History channel program is great, thank you. However, you seem unaware of the long history of PBS funded programs and series in the 80’s-90’s that looked at this issue including greater context: US foreign policy and military involvement in Central and South America and Asia. The multi-million dollar productions were not put on air for risk if PBS funding cut-offs. I was on a board of a social development (NGO) film and video theater in Toronto that began to generate cash flow by showing regular Friday nights featuring the American productions banned from airing for Americans. We also hosted the launch of documentaries by Canadians and others looking at the work of Noam Chomsky among others.

So your article about the History Channel show is nice, yet would benefit from deeper and wider context…research the archives. Look in the libraries.

From a Canadian perspective, including conventional media reports to this day, it’s clear how silenced the people in the “land of the free” continue to be.

But it seems that nobody is really listening or looking into files or looking around.

The war on truth in the name of more research is something to be revealed. Yet, you don’t have to turn over so many stones if you look beyond American habits and self reflection to entertain some obvious reflections offered by your allies in seeking truth. Your article reminds me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

This is a scam article. I watched the first two episodes and NOTHING in it is new info that wasn’t already available to the public; or in a million other documentaries about this subject. The only thing that stood out was that a reporter from THIS WEBSITE is interviewed (most likely to sell his own book) Im looking at you Ryan Grimm. So glad you guys have turned yourselves into a nepotistic news org to enrich yourselves under the guise of reporting on an “important” tv show. Did anyone really think the History Channel (owned by A & E, which in turn is owned by Disney and NBC Universal) would really have some show that wasn’t just a circle jerk. Ancient Aliens anyone? Glenn Greenwald, you should be ashamed that this type of work is peddled on the site you co-founded. Typical corporate synergy trash! Isn’t this everything you propose to fight against? Perhaps you need to re-watch, or re-read, Manufacturing Consent? Too bad, i thought this site had promise. Think I’m just making this up? Here’s a reminder: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/ken-silverstein-the-intercept-115586 And another one: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/01/first-look-media-pierre-omidyar
Guess you guys have to cover for the fact that the Russia ruse isn’t working, huh? Embarrassing! This is the type of S%$T that Fox News and MSNBC does.

I have watched the first two shows thus far, and when coupled with my understanding of the JFK assassination, I am noticing how the history of all things nefarious from the late fifties through to the eighties has seemed to have Anti-Castro Cubans involved in some form or fashion.

The second episode of this was truly remarkable — the highest expression of its kind ever committed to film, and perhaps even to paper. They tied in things like Klaus Barbie and the Tejada administration trafficking, the emergence of Eugene Hasenfus as a Contra drug smuggler who had previously been smuggling dope from Laos in Air America, the frame-up of the Sandinistas by the people who would arrange and protect drug smuggling for the Contras. It doesn’t connect every dot, but it shows us the outline of a Satanic conspiracy (no lesser term seems apt) in which every step is planned — from the Bolivia coup and cocaine production, the Contra smuggling, the dumping on black neighborhoods, the distribution via a new crack network … all integrated with the sweepers who come along behind to demonize ONLY the black users who are hooked on the crack that the government distributed in order to fund its terrorists to destroy democracy worldwide!

In the whole thing, the only heroes are the stupid people. The DEA agents too damn dumb to accept that dope is anything but bad. Nancy Reagan thoughtlessly undermining the customer base her husband is developing in order to destroy. The reporter who thinks he can simply find out the truth and report it. The stupidity of some of them is endearing; more often infuriating… but everyone who isn’t dumb, is being used by someone smarter and more malicious to cause terrible things to happen to so many. In the end we may really have no better option than to “Just Say No”.

While the History Channel is airing this documentary, MSNBC is doing a ride-along with the sheriff department. The opioid overdoses are predominantly in the suburbs. While ad’s on TV talks about rehab for suburbanites. AG Sessions is talking about ‘war on drugs’. And, MSNBC is riding along with sheriff’s, while they are arresting black people. What a coincidence?

Just thought I’d mention Gary Webb. Journalist who exhaustively broke the Contra’s-CIA – crack cocaine story, in a three part series his paper ran “Dark Alliance” in The San Jose Mercury News. He was attacked and his reputation ruined by the trilogy of Deep State Tyranny: LA Times, NYT’s, and of course..WP.
Kill The Messenger is a hard movie to watch. Since he killed himself in 2004. How those who wrote the smear pieces against him can sleep at night is beyond me.

As I recall the only “radical” news source back then was the Narco News, and not much else. No one was even talking about this back then as it was happening , yet alone describing the US press as the “MSM-Corporate Press” – shame on you. Just think if there had been TI back in those days, Webb might still be alive.

And don’t forget…if the so-called “liberal” LA Times and others could do what they did then, they can certainly do it again. And they will.

And I am sick of people here saying they are tired of hearing about Gary Webb. Maybe ya’ll weren’t even born then or just plain guilty of ignorance. Whatever.

Could be that when this started, the power base for politicians was middle America, what is now the Rust Belt. Inner city drug problems were someone else’s problem, and bringing the suburban drug problem into the light was still a decade away.

“The ‘War on Drugs’ by the U.S. Government is a dismal failure. No matter who is arrested and imprisoned the flow of drugs into the United States is not altered in the slightest. What is most unfortunate is that there is always someone who comes up with something to sell that will give street addicted persons another kind of high, I really doesn’t matter if the high is lethal. There is always someone (thousands of someones actually) who are willing to risk death to experience a new high. Then there is the dilemma with legal drugs. alcohol has been a problem since it went out of the hands of the ancient shaman into the mouths of the average early human.” Chapter 9, “From Victim to Victor! Defeating a Victim’s Consciousness” by Alexander S. Holub. The so-called “War on Drugs” wasn’t even a skirmish. Both legal and illegal drugs have been easily available on the streets, in the houses and even in doctor’s offices. If a war is to be fought correctly it must include all aspects of the object. A proper war on drugs should also include legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs. But the tobacco growers, alcohol refiners and drug companies have a better organization and money than the street pushers.

Actually, wars on plants (which is where ALL drugs come from) are inherently completely stupid and counterproductive. War, in any form, destroys both the good and the bad. If we really want to stop drug use, we HAVE to address it as a public health matter, NOT a criminal matter. Drugs are quite easily obtained in prison, so obviously locking people up is more than useless, and actually creates as many (if not more) criminals than it keeps off the streets. All the plants that the “illegal” drugs come from have other uses and are not nearly as harmful in their plant state (i.e., when not heavily processed and refined). A “war” on anything is inherently stupid, a “war” on plants even more so.

I do not think the War on Drugs was a pointless sham. I think it’s fairly clear that the War on Drugs so they very important economic problem which was high unemployment amongst minority groups due to a political process that shifted industry to the white communities.

You just can’t have a bunch of angry unemployed poor black minorities hanging around in the streets talking about what’s going on… ( as Marvin Gaye had suggested)

No the War on Drugs allowed them to incarcerate and criminalize and while doing so it allowed them to take away their freedom much earlier then we see the loss of freedom today.

The drug war was a solution to a problem the plutocrats had, and until we can begin to tell that story I do not believe the actual story will ever be told.

The first part of this series has a quote attributed to John Ehrlichman:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

He left out criminalizing LSD. The whole counterculture was so freaking out Nixon & Hoover that the clampdown is just now trying to lift. I was on a local SoCal list including picture of me at civil rights protest at the police dept, pic blown up with locals circled. This is what Trump/Sessions would have us return to the good old days–stopping dissent by any means w/ full authority.

The series should be followed up by exposing the cynical approach of federal prosecutors in fighting the war on drugs, and the countless lives that were ruined for minor infractions, while truly violent and truly despicable dealers were permitted to plead down.

Who the heck wants to tune in to listen to the History Channel lecture us on the terrible sins of America? How WE’RE to blame for the whole drug problem! They used to be non-political, but History has been creeping to the Left with their subtle anti-American shows of late. Sad. The audience definitely sees it…and it’s not good.

Um, the show is about the American war on drugs and how the American CIA basically flooded America with drugs. Hard not to make America look bad in that scenario, regardless of your political orientation. Also, politicians on the left and right are both responsible for this abhorrent stain on our nation.

Andrew Bacevich. It’s called “America’s War for the Greater Middle East.” Not an exhaustive account by any means. But still a good critical analysis of America’s policies there for the past three decades.

Yes, THESE are the authorities we relinquish our constitutional rights to, our privacy, our freedom of expression, our miranda rights. Our blind patriotic nationalist subserviance is in their hands, all to ‘keep us safe’.

I wonder if my buddy will be mentioned. After being handled over to the feds by Hiro Plata, George Moralas’, of iran contra, right hand man, he spent 19 months of a 15 year sentence in fed prison. The FBI got him out so he could run cocain for them for the next 7 years. The coast guard contingent on a US Navy frig would take it off his boat and bring it to the base in S FLA

Thank you Jon Schwarz for this great story! I hope millions of people will watch the TV documentary . It’s about time someone made a documentary on drug trafficking and reveal who’s behind it. I don’t watch TV but I’d like to watch this.

Sounds like a pretty limited hangout. It goes way beyond alliance of conveniece and unintended consequences. Consider:
– the fact that high-level American officals (from the Walkers et al financing of the Opium Wars to Bill’s operation at Mena) have always colluded in and profited from the drug trade.
– the not-so-secret fact that money laundering profits are about all that keep the big banks afloat.
– the fact that drugs have been introduced and marketed by the CIA specifically to destroy potentially problematic movements – e.g. crack cocaine in Black neighborhoods.
– the ‘War on Drugs’ has been used as a cover to use military force to suppress various indigenous and populist movements throughout Latin America.

I thought it very interesting that the show repeatedly spoke about “defeating communism” and never once called the Vietnam War what it really was, support for the military industrial complex! Eisenhower warned us!

Yes. The hidden motivating factor in the war on drugs is the creation of a fear in people that makes them easy to control. The goal of these wars is maintaining a system that uses hidden money to make money for people who want to control everyone.

Interesting that after revealing US government involvement in the “sham” drug war at the highest levels, the only human face The Intercept will show from the four part series is a Black face from the crack era.

Google mr. Hasenfus who was a crew member on a CIA controlled plane who was shot down over Nicaragual in 1986, The plane would take weapons to the contras who opposed the leftist government of Daniel Ortega. The planes would then bring cocaine back to the US where it would be sold.
That cash then went to missiles for Iran (to get around law banning Reagan for selling weapons to Iran) in gratitude for the hostage crisis that caused the US to oust Jimmy Carter who angered Iran by his peace plan with Israel and Egypt. Oliver North was Reagan’s point man in creating this modern day triangle trade of arms/cocaine/missiles that rivals the immorality of the molasses/rum/slave triangle of the 1700s.
It took the CIA and Oliver North a marine colonel to run the whole illegal system So yes The CIA was involved up to its neck which was buried deep into the neo cons ass.

Ah man, great good stuff here; but I’m losing it: trafficking by a guy named Trafficante! Really?! and this after reality winner. Fuck I’m like that kid on the return trip from the dentist: “Is this real life?”

Cocaine Cowboys is a good doc story too; then there’s the Kill the Messenger, and less related The Seven Five.

Your tax dollars at work. Who could complain..?
And this same agency, the CIA, is also currently neck-deep in struggle to convince America’s ever fearful public that they need to “Run for your lives! The Russians are coming…”
Let me know at which point it all becomes completely absurd, or kabuki, if you prefer. I guess it’s laugh or cry.
But in any case, “Proudly made in America…”

Fact: most of the world’s legal opium comes from Tasmania, where over 20,000 hectares of opium poppies are under cultivation by Glaxo Smith Kline, and Johnson and Johnson, and their Tasmanian Alkaloids.

Stunning Secret? The two “official” narco states in the world just happen to also be military clients of Washington. Namely Colombia and Afghanistan. Many Americans have turned off their televisions and are quietly researching the Internet about their shadow Government. If you wish to begin educating yourself, start with this book written by Alfred McCoy in 1972: The Politics of Heroin. Yes, It’s probably available at your local library. You will eventually come to the same conclusion that most conspiracy theorists have, that our Government is actually complicit in the illegal Drug trade, weapons trade, Sex slave trade, etc, etc, etc.

you are spot on. just to add, Afghanistan heroin is being transported by CIA organized USAF transports to NATO military base in Kosovo, Serbia, –
“Bondsteel”. From there Albanian Mafia take over and smuggle it to EU.

I was generally fairly impressed by the show. They came up with some connections I hadn’t known about, and brought others to light in an organized way. The anti-drug enforcers and the drug merchants are no more enemies than two swordsmen in a puppet show, one on the right hand and one on the left — and they explain how Leary is playing front man while Hitchcock is hobnobbing with (who was it from the Nixon administration?) laundering money in the Caribbean, how a doctor at the Haight-Ashbury free clinic is going back to the chemical warfare lab to make reports, how eventually G. Gordon Liddy is discussing … “philosophy” with a future Medellin cartel leader.

There are things I feel like they were too timid to say – they allow multiple appeals to ‘unintended consequences’, because the alternative must seem too radical to say. That there was nothing unintended there – that you can’t round up hippies and blacks in a War on Drugs if you haven’t had the foresight to help popularize drug use in their communities first!

They do leave out some inconvenient details – I mean, LSD was not the first psychedelic; Aldous Huxley was busy cleansing doors of perception decades before, with good old fashioned mescaline. Nonetheless, their main unspoken point – that popularizing LSD beyond a circle of philosophers to become a mere hedonistic end had the effect of distracting hippies and helping to tar the movement to some – well, it has some validity. It’s not all valid of course, because the experience is indeed remarkable (really, the human mind is associated with causality violations that define the boundary conditions of the cosmos, and perturbing these perceptions is at once dangerous in ways that are not widely understood, yet potentially instructive in ways necessary for a proper understanding of human nature). Reagan was at once entirely right and entirely wrong in seeing the appeal of the drug as foolish.

But the inconvenient detail that seems most absent is the significance of the draft, and the reaction of the public toward that monstrous imposition. It is not LSD that changed society, but the risk of a pointless and malignant death hanging over every young man. Of all the conspiracies in play, the most significant are those headed by God… and the other side.

I think the war on drugs, truly was created just to set the stage to pit American neighbor against American neighbor, for how many of us were labelled, “druggies,” BY alcohol swilling, pill poppers, all because we liked to smoke a J? IF, the war on drugs had been truly and sincerely about, “the kids,” then we’d have a war on pedophiles, yet, we don’t. In many states still, a pocket full of a dried plant, even a miniscule amount, will garner you more prison time, than that of a grown man popped for sodomizing an infant. let that sink on for a bit, and when you come out of your disgust coma, you will see, quite clearly, the scam has been on you/us. in peace.

“It is remarkable the American government are still refusing to acknowledge their operations. The scientific data is there for all to see. How can people demand regulations and controls on operations if the government won’t admit these operations exist? It is insulting to people’s intelligence.“

Great piece!
I will say once again and keep saying the CIA couldn’t have done this without beaurocrats and their unAmerican ways and beliefs and their lawyers used as consultants on how to be unAmerican.. As a result of the policies of the enemy within we have fucked millions of good people. Do us all a favor! Shoot a member of the BAR and a beaurocrat because they will continue to make it worse for all of us unless they realize there are consequences to their unAmerican actions..

This is a good article on the CIA involvement with illicit economic activities. And if alchohol was still illegal, if Prohibition had never been repealed, then you can be sure the CIA would be involved in the illicit alcohol trade today.

For the CIA, it’s about money. Money, a source of influence, outside of Congressional black budget appropriations. In alliance with the Saudis and the Israelis, too. Funneling black market money to illicit programs for regime change without Congressional approval, that’s the enticement of the illegal drug trade.

Of course, if drugs were legalized and all the black money / cartel money became subject to the standard international tax and control standards? Would that be good for CIA covert ops and funding?

That’s really the heart of the CIA interest in illegal drugs: untraceable money for various covert games like financing ISIS in Syria.

What you say is true enough. But I actually know these dweebs. And they are not impressive people at all. In any way. They don’t even fill out the reports, ever. Half steppin doesn’t get ya started Symbi. But if nobody watches this program? They still suck.

You didn’t really critique this series. You seem to be covering just the CIA drug money slush funds for black ops part when the real story is when Nixon signed the CSA which was the weaponizing drug war to hyper drive and using it to destroy the civil society out from under Black, Latinos, Native American and the white counter culture all fueling peace with music.

Well, that’s nice that The History Channel is finally putting on some real history, that most of us who read The Intercept already know to some extent. Too bad this channel has ruined its reputation by putting on programs of alien invasions and other assorted nonsense.

Assorted nonsense? I haven’t posted my feelings for “Mudd Cats” , Im saying it’s real. Those Noodlers’ lives should be documented. I believe that’s history, at this point. In terms of peoples’ belief of aliens? Maybe you’re also a bit highbrow for tv?

I am calling all a y’all out. Please post links to each and every democracy now segment that delves anywhere near this history channel report, every hour or halfhour? Anything. You democracy nowers got what? Post the links? I’ll read em and comment on each of em? I smell a rat, prove me wrong. Is the d n report more insightful? Does the report name more names? Jeremy? Dont you have something to podcast?

Too late Barbara. The Aliens have already invaded and are now running our Government. They claim dual citizenship and are usually appointed to positions of significant influence. Just take a sideways glance at Jerod Kushner some time.

I got my life paid to me for this drivel. And plenty of people had plenty of ways to kill me when, I was somewhere else. They failed Michael. And the only people who can kill me here, almost definately had some part in this release. So, you just keep resistin buddy.

Very interesting piece. I hope that the documentary will also deal with the role of US banks in laundering money for some of the major cartels, as has been covered by Robert Mazur and also brought up in public hearings by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Oh believe there will be. The comment sections will hear about dea agents, most of them young women who went undercover only to be hung out to dry. Sorry, I was hamhanded in my attack on the US media, andrew chambers, a millionare fink, despite being a convicted perjurer was outted by the St Louis Post Dispatch before he was rehired by holder. At the time of that cover story chambers had only finked $270,000 in ratvenue.

Human beings always have and always will take drugs to escape some kind of pain. A big part of this hypocracy is saying that there’s a difference between alcohol and drugs. Alcohol is legal. Heroin isn’t. Therefore, alcohol isn’t a drug? No.

Also, what about 12 step programs? While they try to help people, they’re also multi-million dollar businesses. AA has offices worldwide. Their US headquarters is in Manhattan. Not exactly cheap office space. If all drugs were legalized, would politicians put that tax revenue into treatment like they should?

And AA’s ‘success’ rate at lasting cures is below 30%, probably way below. Changing one’s diet can bring that rate up to 70% or greater, especially considering alchollics get many of their calories from alcohol, and so come to ‘depend’ on those alcohol calories.

And there’s the other end of the problem too: criminalising drug users helps create the market. If potheads were able to grow their own, if addicts were not forced into a criminal underworld, if people could get medical support for what is essentially a medical problem… It would vastly reduce the stranglehold of the dealers, make it more difficult for them and drastically reduce their profits.

This is a great development, for sure one day hopefully there’ll be a documentary that shows just how knee deep the CIA is involved in terrorism. War on drugs = war on terror = war for control, money and power.

Thank you Mr. Schwarz!!
I have had discussions with friends where it seems just a bit too coincidental that we suddenly have a “Crusade” against prescription opioids at the same time our streets are flooded with heroin – and the U.S. controls the major supplier in the world.
Where will people turn for severe pain relief when opioids are not prescribed??

Im pretty sure the whole US media has been quite a lot more pathetic than this since The San Jose Mercury News covered any of it? You tell me, free, what have I been missing? How exactly do you think this issue will be discussed, let alone resolved if not covered extensively on television? And since they appear to actually be airing this, should nobody write about the endeavor? I dont think you have answers to any of these questions but if ya do…Ready! Fire! Aim!

Yet, the CIA will somehow remain unscathed by these revelations as usual as with their ongoing legitimatizing of torture, death squads, undermining democracies to install right-wing dictators, etc. all for the “good” of the U.S. The CIA most likely considers this type of exposure as promotional to their horrific work via this public familiarization. The complete lack of follow up criticism in the MSM is always evidence of this and it serves to vindicate their crimes of terror against humanity.

Virtually every other western based English language news site has a lame recap of the Sunday talk shows. What’s your point Unc? I think there are actual questions about the timing of this telecast as well as who funded and produced material such as this as well as how they got it to market. And again, why now? I’m gonna take a quick left turn and hope to not lose y’all with this next one… As I commented before, things dont look too good for jeff sessions. After Roger Stone pissed all over his idea of expanding holder’s assault on legalized and medicinal weed, he has basically botched every statement he’s publicly made. I wonder Bob if that’s a coincidence? And I wonder how many like him are gonna be ready to be thrown into 2017.

What ever became of the tribunal set up in Paris last year to investigate The Panama Papers? Didn’t they put two Aussies at the helm of that one? I guess what with the resistance and all why would I care about that?

“To its credit, the series makes clear that this is not part of a secret government plot to turn Americans into drug addicts.” Au contraire, mon frere. At the very least, there was a reckless disregard for those communities that would be most impacted by importing these drugs, and the resulting explosion in the prison population. More “super predators” in prison? I’m with her!

As far as I am concerned, this documentary needs to be dedicated to Gary Webb. Those spineless bastards at the San Jose Mercury News who screwed him over should be the ones who are no longer with us.

To its credit, the series makes clear that this is not part of a secret government plot to turn Americans into drug addicts.
NO. That only happens when they tell the truth with the Clinton Chronicles which includes the CIA running drugs into the Mena Airport with the protection from Bill. The CIA still needs those millions and protects the cartels today. The cartels bosses pull in $40M “profit” a week – that does not include local operational expenses, american reseller commissions and costs of product. That is a LOT of distribution on a regular basis – hence the need for protection.

The CIA involvement in drugs began in the 60’s with smuggling from Cambodia during the VietNam fiasco. It was easy to get the drugs in back then throo the military personnel and bases.

Then along came Col Oliver North who cemented the program for the CIA and the cartels. The need to continue with the success of the flood with drugs to americans was naturally dependent upon the election of Hillary Clinton. Seth Rich found out and they murdered him.

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek’s army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA

Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Mai that’s a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief’s brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman’s name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence’s U.S. aid

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy and peddled so loose
He busted himself and cooked his own goose
Took the reward for the opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. intelligence came in to Laos

Mary Azarian/Matt Wuerker I’ll tell you no lie I’m a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosavan

All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng’s bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshall Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting comfiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

LINES OF FIRE (1992, First Run Features) ” officially sanctioned drug traffic out of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle … opium warlords raise private armies to help the Thai and Mayanmar governments put down pro-democracy activists while fueling most of the world’s heroin supply” There are some interesting moments with the CIA . http://ew.com/article/1993/06/11/lines-fire/

Yes it was mentioned in the book, same intelligence and contacts were used to smuggle the film crew in and to set up meeting with General Khun Sa
btw: highly recommend it – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102312/

Truth has been hiding in plain sight, for decades. Just like all our other “wars” cancer, poverty and military actions not much thought on either engagement or execution, when to get in or out, or what to do not to double-down on failure.

“The CIA is from its very beginning collaborating with mafiosas who are involved in the drug trade because these mafiosas will serve the larger agenda of fighting communism.”

I have long pondered roughly what percentage of assaults on democratic principles — in the last century at least, but certainly those spurred by the Cold War — has been justified by “the fight against communism.” If not not 100%, it has to be very nearly so.

Add terrorism as a replacement for communism, and you have an unbroken string, from the post-World War I red scares through today’s (now euphemized) Global War on Terror.

Should be a very interesting watch. It may give some of the liberal establishment pause before continuing to reify the intelligence agencies. But you’d have thought Iraq and countless other episodes would already have done that.

Partisans don’t care about hypocrisy. The only reason the right started rejecting our foreign entanglements is due to Obama embracing the sme insanity. Trump is actually doubling down on this stupidity. Partisans on the right will go along with.

I’m glad Hillary lost, partisans would have condoned all the corporate/Neocon policies she was ready to unleash.

That’s the fundamental truth of this American political charade. Both parties prioritizing the economic agenda of Big Money donors at home, both engaging in imperialist warmongering abroad. To the unreflective partisan, everything’s hunky-dory and excusable if their party’s enacting these anti-human policies; but it suddenly become the height of idiocy when the other side continues them and the republic is being gravely endangered.

This has to be a new low for the progressive side’s partisan blindness, though: one of the only reasonable policies Trump proposed – ratcheting down tensions with a nuclear-armed Russia – being the one they’re most anxious to thwart. To the extent of championing intelligence agencies who have an obvious self-interest in perpetuating the fallacy of a grave Russian threat. For no reason other than mindless Tweedledum and Tweedledummer partisan squabbling, we could conceivably be heading towards nuclear holocaust.

Would it have killed you to say it’s on tonight (Sun 8/18) at 9 PM EST?

I would advise people watch it ASAP, because I remember when Gary Webb uncovered part of the story. Before long it was all withdrawn as terribly wrong … not because there was anything wrong with the facts, mind, but there was something wrong with where they led. I wouldn’t be surprised if the later episodes end up locked in a vault and nobody associated with it is ever allowed near a TV station again. I wish it weren’t so.

Great piece, and good news, Jon. The History Channel actually has treated drug prohibition before, and that was also a superb series: Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way But a full-blown examination of this so-called “war” has long been overdue.

To understate, the obscene extent to which U.S. foreign policy has both been driven by our prohibitionist policies, and by a desire to exploit black markets for our own sordid ends, has been under-reported. Certainly in the mainstream press.

Live long enough, and what was considered “extremist” and “crazy” views when one was in one’s 20s and 30s (in my case, the 1980s and 90s), and suddenly one is deemed sane on that. (But of course, still wackadoodle on the other things one is also right about, but which have not yet been anointed as True by establishment media.)

Yes, it’s about time that the truth be told about the so-called “war” on street drugs. Now, if only they’d give more air time than has already been given to another insidious war: the “pimping” of prescription drugs to the masses via direct marketing and advertising. Great reporting on this, Jon Schwartz!

That’s the reason we have a “war” on prescription opioids. Heroin abounds on streets, we (the U.S.) control the largest supplier of opium to the world in Afghanistan, and the CIA doesn’t have enough money for their world-wide ops.
If people can’t get pain relief from Rx opioids, where else will they turn?

To its credit, the series makes clear that this is not part of a secret government plot . . .

Tell that to the black communities that were devastated by the crack cocaine epidemic–and lied to.

As an aside, “mafiosas” should probably be mafiosos or mafiosi. Mafia members are masculine–even the women. Either that or it should be mafias, plural for more than one mafia. It’s part of a quote so maybe someone misheard it.

The State Dept got away with this: “We are aware of these charges but we have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof.”

Now 45 years later, the proof is pretty overwhelming. Bush Sr was heavily involved, notably in the shift from SE Asia to Afghanistan via the ISI and Operation Cyclone. Not to mention his pal, Noreiga. What an abysmal black hole we live in.

One more thing: Much of this is just coming to light 50 years latter and all will never be known but one has to wonder, what are these folks up to now, how much of the 20 trillion of American debt has gone into their pockets?

No. The article is not “marred” by any such thing. This is not an outlet that practices The View from Nowhere and aspires to be regarded as “objective.” Rather, the writers tend to be known as activist journalists.

“Fighting Communism” Using the power of the American government by “hoard the wealth” conservatives to sabotage, undermine, destroy, annihilate, murder, torture, starve, manipulate or remove any leader, country, organization, system, government, company, financial structure, program, person, lobby, advocacy group, or nation that was involved in sharing the wealth with the majority. The conservative ruling power elite uses every trick and device at their disposal including drugs to sow disorganization and discord in society so that we cannot organize against their exploitation of our resources.

This is encouraging to finally see. For decades now the “war on drugs” has eroded our Constitutionally recognized rights. The government supplies the drugs, brings in their death squads from South America to distribute, and feeds the media propaganda to blow the use totally out of proportion which is used to establish the private prison sector. In addition, congress buys into the propaganda as always, and passes more law restricting our freedoms, making more money for their buddies. One piece that I have missed is how much busting and incarcerating drug users costs the imprisoned.
In my mind, the war on drugs is a gross abuse of law, leading to a public loss of trust in the entire rule of law. Nixon admitted to Erlichman that his war on drugs was really to silence those who dared to protest the war in Vietnam. The present “war” is just as dishonest.

I’m really asking about whether or not the *show* mentions F&F….you know, because it’s one of the most recent and relevant examples to prove the show’s point. If it did, it should be in this article for obvious reasons.

Regarding the article, your contention is that adding 3 more sentences would throw this article over the edge of being a short summary?